In an interview with Metro, Dark Soul’s director Hidetaka Miyazaki speaks about the game’s brutal difficulty.
One of the interesting things Miyazaki said about Dark Soul’s difficulty was that he was sad about not everyone being able to complete the game. He might “prepare another difficulty” to make the game more accessible.
Here’s his full statement:
“I personally want my games to be described as satisfying rather than difficult. As a matter of fact, I am aiming at giving players sense of accomplishment in the use of difficulty.
Having said that, however, it is true that Dark Souls is rather difficult and a number of people may hesitate to play. This fact is really sad to me and I am thinking about whether I should prepare another difficulty that everyone can complete or carefully send all gamers the messages behind our difficult games.
However, I suppose gamers do not particularly prefer easy games. What they want is interesting and worthwhile games to play, so I think it is natural that hindrance or stress that does not attribute to such interesting and worthwhile elements will be removed in the end.
If the number of easy games is increasing nowadays, I guess it is because difficulty is not related to interesting and worthwhile game elements in many games among players.”
NOAH
September 3, 2012 at 10:41 PMI feel like there shouldn’t be a “mode” for difficulty. That’s what summons are for! If you’re having trouble with an area summon somebody, but if you want a challenge, don’t. Instead of adding some ridiculous “easy mode” just fix the matchmaking system. If anyone is complaining about Dark Souls difficulty, they’re just trolls, people who aren’t thinking correctly because they can’t learn from their mistakes and fix them, or they’ve never played the game. This is not a problem in the game, fix things that aren’t problems instead of creating new ones FROM SOFTWARE!
Grant Gaines (大将)
September 4, 2012 at 12:44 AM@ Noah
This is a problem with Marketing, which in turn makes it a problem with the game. Most people list Dark / Demon Souls as difficult games, many sites mention it in topics about difficulty, trophy sites list it as a 8 or higher out of 10, ETC. Additionally the game is projected as such too, for instance the new version is “Prepare to Die Edition”, which was a slogan attached to Dark Souls. Due to this, most people see the game as virtually impossible or way too stressful for them, so they avoid it. This is the real problem, everyone acting like Dark / Demon Souls is it’s own class of difficulty.